1. Technical Field of Example Embodiments of the Present Invention
This invention relates to the management of alarm signals in a monitoring system. Such systems are configured to receive signals from the devices being monitored in the event of a condition exceeding a predetermined value, or some other condition indicative of a malfunction or other condition requiring attention or recording.
2. Description of Related Art
In the alarm management environment it is often possible for a malfunctioning device or service to flood the monitoring system with alarms. In order to record these alarms in a way that is convenient for the user to understand, it is common for duplicated alarms to be recorded as a single event with an incrementing tally to record the number of occurrences. This allows the user to readily identify the elements of the system that are generating a large number of alarms. It also makes it easier for alarms from other elements, raising only one or a few alarms, to be identified from amongst the large total number of alarms.
However, very large numbers of alarm events can overwhelm the system and it may be unable to rationalise these event floods, resulting in large volumes of event reports being generated. If these event floods are not stopped at source quickly, they have a crippling effect on the alarm management system.
Systems are known in which filter criteria are applied to prevent overload by repeated alarms having predetermined characteristics. However, these require pre-characterisation of the overload conditions that are to be identified.